


Beyond Measure

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Paint The Sky With Stars [25]
Category: Night World - Fandom, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Witches, Crossover, Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 04:46:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7154156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Any, any, Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. (Marianne Williamson)"</p><p>John and Evan are confronted by their deepest fears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond Measure

Rodney stared at the glowing candle that Evan had lit with his mind. “Well, that’s just unfair. Will _everyone_ be better at magic than me?”  
  
John swore, a string of names of long-forgotten deities, and then he was pointing his gun at Evan and Evan had his hands raised in surrender, blue eyes wide.  
  
“How can you do that?” John demanded.  
  
Evan closed his eyes, swallowed hard. “They call us The Forsaken for a reason.”  
  
“How? That’s impossible! Not even the First House can -” John’s hands were shaking, and he looked terrified.  
  
Rodney blinked. “John, what’s going on? Put the gun down.”  
  
“What else can you do?” John hissed.  
  
Evan opened his eyes, blinked rapidly, and oh hell, was he about to cry? What the hell was going on?  
  
“Nothing like - like witchfire,” he said. “Just the basics. The four elements.”  
  
“There are more than four elements,” Rodney said dismissively.  
  
All the color drained from John’s face. “The four elements are all it takes.”  
  
“All what takes?” Rodney asked.  
  
“To destroy the world,” John said.  
  
He sounded completely serious.  
  
“That’s insane,” Rodney said.  
  
Evan shook his head vehemently. “No, I would never. I’m not that strong.”  
  
“But you’re _Forsaken_.” John shook his head, confused.  
  
“What does that even mean?” Rodney asked.  
  
“I know that!” Evan snapped.  
  
John’s finger curled around the trigger, and Evan went still, which was stupid, because he was basically bullet-proof, or at least bullet-proof compared to a regular human.  
  
“But - how could you? It’s your job to stomp out even the faintest hint - the First House insisted -”  
  
“ _I know!_ ” Evan’s voice was broken. “Why do you think they made us the enforcers? To keep us in check. To police our own. We’re our own damn kapos. To remind us of what would be done to us if - if anyone ever found out. If we ever even dared try.”  
  
“Does Thea know?”  
  
“No. I’d never risk her like that. She has no clue.”  
  
“What about Blaise?”  
  
“She barely talks to me.”  
  
John took a deep, hitching breath. “What about Ronon? Does he know?”  
  
And then Evan laughed, the sound like falling glass. “He’s not from Earth, John. He doesn’t think the way you do. On Sateda, we were gods.”  
  
John fired.  
  
Evan went down with a cry, and then John was on top of him and tearing into his throat, and Evan was thrashing, and John pinned him down, yanked open one of his desk drawers, and then stabbed Evan.  
  
In the shoulder.  
  
With a silver blade.  
  
Evan yowled in pain, and John was on his radio, shouting for security teams to come to his quarters immediately, and for another team to go and detain Ronon, and to take silver.  
  
Rodney huddled against John’s bed, horrified. “What did you do? Why did you hurt him?”  
  
John straightened up, wiped the blood from his mouth, and Rodney saw his fangs. “He’s dangerous, Rodney. Stay back.”  
  
Evan tried to pull the knife out, hissed when it burned his hand. He snarled and spat at John, and his gaze was feral. Inhuman. 

Security came, and John ordered them to lock Evan in the brig, with a cell between him and Ronon, and to leave the knife in him. The Marines, who usually took orders from Evan, were wary, but they obeyed.

John helped Rodney to his feet, and he stormed for the nearest transporter, radioing for Woolsey and Teyla as he went.

“What’s going on?” Rodney protested, stumbling along as John dragged him.

Woolsey and Teyla met them halfway to Ops, and John began speaking in a low, clipped tone. What he was saying was crazy. He was talking about dragons, earthquakes, volcanoes, fire raining down from the sky, death and destruction, floods, hurricanes. The end of the world.

“Slow down,” Woolsey said. “You’re not making any sense. I read Weir and Carter’s briefs on the whole - Night World situation. This wasn’t in there.”

“Bottom line,” John said, “is that Evan Lorne is capable of destroying the world, and he has to remain neutralized until - until I can take him back to Earth and have him dealt with.”

Teyla frowned. “You mean killed.”

“Absolutely.”

Rodney was chilled by the cold ruthlessness in John’s entire demeanor. He tried to reach out through the silver cord, but John’s mind was walled off.

“Colonel,” Woolsey began, but John shook his head.

“I don’t think you understand. You think the Wraith are bad? They have technology and superior numbers, and as long as they feed they can live forever, but we can shoot them, and without tech, they’re about as vulnerable as the rest of us. A dragon shapeshifter needs no tech. He can upend an entire tectonic plate with a thought.”

“But Major Lorne said he wasn’t that strong,” Rodney said.

“The Wraith eat us because they have to. We’re just food who talks back. To the shifters? Humans are more than food. They’re toys. They’re entertainment. Think being a Runner is sadistic? The things the shifters used to do were a hundred times worse.”

“Used to do,” Woolsey said. “According to you, thousands of years ago.”

“Only because we have been so, so careful to make sure they could never do it again,” John said.

“But Major Lorne has never once demonstrated an inclination to behave in such a manner,” Teyla said. She peered at John. “You have drunk blood again, have you not? You will suffer when you withdraw.”

John shook his head. “No. I’m staying this way. I’m the only thing that stands between Lorne and Ronon and everyone else. I need to take Lorne back to Earth ASAP.”

“And Ronon? He is a trusted friend and ally.” Had moved beyond concerned and was starting to look angry.

“On Sateda,” John said, “Ronon’s people looked at Lorne’s like they were gods. He doesn’t understand the danger Lorne poses.”

“Colonel,” Woolsey said, “you cannot go attacking and imprisoning your own men on the basis of - of ancient superstition and paranoia!”

Rodney realized John was angry on top of being terrified. His hands were curled into white-knuckled fists, and he was trembling oh-so-faintly.

“Sir,” John said through gritted teeth, “you _don’t understand._ ”

Woolsey crossed his arms over his chest. “Then help me understand.”

John crumpled beneath the yellow glow of a Wraith stunner.

“Holy!” Rodney fumbled for his gun. Didn’t have his gun.

Teyla stepped in front of Woolsey and drew her gun smoothly.

Carson lowered the stunner and tapped his radio. “Bring Major Lorne to the infirmary.”

“Carson,” Teyla said, lowering her gun. “What is going on?”

“A battle almost as old as the one with the Wraith.” Carson directed a couple of nurses to strap John down to a cot, gave them special rope to restrain them, and then he gave Teyla a pencil and told her to watch him closely.

Ronon stormed into the infirmary, Evan limp in his arms, and Rodney remembered the last time he’d seen a similar tableau. This time Evan’s eyes were open, and he was panting through the pain.

Ronon laid him on another cot, several away from John, and Carson yanked the knife out, curled his hands over the wound to begin its healing.

Carson kicked everyone out of the infirmary.

Hours later, he told Rodney he could come visit John and only John, and only because he was John’s soulmate. Ronon, because he wasn’t Evan’s soulmate, hadn’t been allowed to visit, and he’d stalked the halls in True Form, growling at anyone who tried to speak to him.

Rodney paused in the doorway to the infirmary. What the hell could he say to John? Because John was terrified, but he was also acting insane.

“Here’s the thing,” Evan said. “All my life, I grew up hearing the insults, the slurs, the taunts. ‘Go mark a fire hydrant’.”

“I’ve never said that to a werewolf.” John’s voice was low, sharp.

“All of the jokes about balls of string and hacking up hairballs. Heard it all. I knew my place. I joined the Forsaken Pack when I was twelve, like every good little Lorne before me. And I hunted. And I killed. And I killed and I killed and I killed, and in every shifter who died, I saw my own face. I got the message loud and clear. In a world full of monsters, I was the worst, second class, alive at the sufferance of the Harmans and the Redferns.” Evan’s voice was flat, unemotional. “I watched all the other shifters around me grow up, bitter with the fact that we would never be good enough, never do enough to atone for something that happened long before we were born. But that wasn’t what I was afraid of. You know what I was afraid of? Everything I could be. Everything in me. The first time I made fire for myself on a freezing night when I was tracking a rogue mountain lion. The first time I created water out of thin air after seven days in the desert tracking a coyote. The first time I went toe-to-toe with a human in basic and knew I could kill him with a single blow. And then I became an Air Force officer, and it was okay to be smart, to be strong, to be efficient. It was okay to be me. And then I met you.”

“Major -”

“The first time you kissed me, I couldn’t believe it. John Sheppard, vampire prince, witch lord all in one. Kissing lowly old me, little forsaken Evan Lorne. And I thought maybe you were different from every other witch and vampire who’d ever crossed my path.”

“Thea -”

“Is a Harman, kind as she is to me.”

“Evan -”

“It hurt like hell when you let me walk away, but I get it. Soulmates. Silver cord. It’s a big deal. It wasn’t because of what I am. It was because of what you have with Rodney. I thought you were different, but I was wrong.”

“ _Evan -_ ”

“How long have you had that silver knife?”

“I’ve always carried a silver knife, and a pencil stake, and an iron knife.”

Iron? Rodney wondered. What was that for?

“I’d never hurt anyone on this base, sir,” Evan said. “But now I guess I know who’d hurt me.”


End file.
